Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of using the 80:20 Rule for Sustainability. The rule encourages us to cut through the noise and focus on the smallest number of actions which will have biggest impact on our future (in fact, I wrote a book about it, an it’s in the top 3,000,000 best-selling books on Amazon 😉). So when it comes to who has most influence over our future, is there a small cabal of individuals who can make great stuff happen at scale?

I would argue there is, and its not who you might think.

I nominate designers. And I mean designers in the broadest sense, including architects and service designers as well as those who draw up the next generation of widgets or this year’s must-have handbag. Think about it, Governments can legislate to incentivise good stuff and penalise/ban bad stuff and business leaders can set targets, but we rely on designers to take us from here to there.

It is designers who will create the demand for recycled materials to close loops and create the circular economy. It is designers who will create our low carbon homes and zero carbon vehicles. It is designers who will eliminate persistent toxins from our world. It is your designers who will determine the shape of your supply chain and thus your ecological footprint. It is designers who will persuade people to follow more Sustainable lifestyles without even knowing that’s what they’re doing.

And the great news is, I find that designers love Sustainability. They relish the challenge, there’s relatively few of them around, and they tend to be found at desks, not on oil rigs or deep in the jungle, so they’re easy to engage with. So here’s your mission of the month – talk to your designers!